Brest, Belarus

Brest, Belarus
Brest, formerly Brest-Litovsk and Brest-on-the-Bug, is a city in Belarus at the border with Poland opposite the Polish town of Terespol, where the Bug and Mukhavets rivers meet, making it a border town. It serves as the administrative center of Brest Region and Brest District, though it is administratively separated from the district. As of 2023, it has a population of 342,461.
Brest is a historical site for many cultures, as it hosted important historical events, such as the Union of Brest and Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Furthermore, the Brest Fortress was recognized by the Soviet Union as a Hero Fortress in honour of the defense of Brest Fortress in June 1941.
In the High Middle Ages, the city often passed between Poland, Kievan Rus' principalities and Lithuania. From the Late Middle Ages to 1795, the city was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which later became a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1569. In 1795, it was incorporated into the Russian Empire with the Third Partition of Poland. After the Polish-Soviet War, the city became part of the Second Polish Republic. In 1939, during the Invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the city was first captured by the Wehrmacht and soon passed on to the USSR per the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty. In 1941, it was retaken by the Germans during Operation Barbarossa. In 1944, it was retaken by the Soviet Red Army during the Lublin–Brest offensive. The city was part of the Byelorussian SSR until the breakup of the USSR in 1991. Since then, Brest has been part of independent Belarus.
Etymology
Several theories attempt to explain the origin of the city's name. The name could originate from Slavic root berest meaning "elm". It could likewise have come from the Lithuanian word brasta meaning "ford".
Traditionally, Belarusian-speakers called the city .
Once a center of Jewish scholarship, the city has the Yiddish name , hence the term "Brisker" used to describe followers of the influential Soloveitchik family of rabbis.
Brest became a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1319. In the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth formed in 1569, the town became known in Polish as , historically (literally: "Lithuanian Brest", in contradistinction to Brześć Kujawski). became part of the Russian Empire under the name or (literally "Lithuanian Brest") in the course of the Third Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795. After World War I, and the rebirth of Poland in 1918, the government of the Second Polish Republic renamed the city as ("Brest on the Bug") on 20 March 1923. After World War II, the city became part of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic with the name simplified as Brest.
Brest's coat of arms, adopted on 26 January 1991, features an arrow pointed upwards and a bow (both silver) on a sky-blue shield. An alternative coat of arms has a red shield. Sigismund II Augustus, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, first granted Brest a coat of arms in 1554.
History
As a town, Brest – Berestye in Kievan Rus – was first mentioned in the Primary Chronicle in 1019 when the Kievan Rus' took the stronghold from the Poles. It is one of the oldest cities in Belarus. It was hotly contested between the Polish rulers (kings, principal dukes and dukes of Masovia) and Kievan Rus princes, laid waste by the Mongols in 1241 (see: First Mongol invasion of Poland), and was not rebuilt until 1275.
Grand Duchy of Lithuania
In 1319, the city became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1349, it was captured by King Casimir III of Poland, however, it was restored to Lithuania two years later. In 1385, it became part of the Polish–Lithuanian union. During the Lithuanian Civil War (1389–1392), in 1390, the city was captured by Polish forces of Władysław II Jagiełło.
In 1390 Brest became the first city in the lands that now are Belarus to receive Magdeburg rights. In 1419 it became a seat of the starost in the newly created Trakai Voivodeship.
Its suburbs were burned by the Teutonic Knights in 1379. In 1409 it was a meeting place of King Władysław II Jagiełło, Grand Duke Vytautas the Great and a Tatar khan under the Archbishop Mikołaj Trąba's initiative, to prepare for war with the Teutonic Knights. In 1410 the town mustered a cavalry banner that participated in the Polish-Lithuanian military victory at the Battle of Grunwald.
Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth
In 1500, it was burned again by Crimean Tatars. In 1566, following the decree of Sigismund II Augustus, a new voivodeship was created – Brest Litovsk Voivodeship.
During the union of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Swedish Empire under king Sigismund III Vasa (Polish–Swedish union), diets were held there. In 1594 and 1596, it was the meeting-place of two remarkable councils of regional bishops of the Roman-Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church. The 1596 council established the Uniate Church (also known as the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church in Belarus and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine). A Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was held in the city in 1653.
In 1657, and again in 1706, the town and castle were captured by the Swedish Army during its invasions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Then, in an attack from the other direction, on 13 January 1660, the invading Streltsy of the Tsardom of Russia under Ivan Andreyevich Khovansky took the Brest Castle in an early morning surprise attack, the town having been captured earlier, and massacred the 1,700 defenders and their families (according to an Austrian observer, Captain Rosestein).
Partitions
On 23 July 1792, the defending Grand Ducal Lithuanian Army, under the leadership of Szymon Zabiełło, and the invading Imperial Russian Army fought a battle near Grodno. On 19 September 1794, the area between Brest and Terespol was the site of another battle won by the Russian invaders led by Alexander Suvorov over a Polish-Lithuanian division under General Karol Sierakowski. Thereafter, Brest was annexed by Russia when the Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth was partitioned for the third time in 1795.
19th century
During Russian rule in the 19th century, Brest Fortress was built in and around the city. The Russians demolished the Polish Royal Castle and most Old Town "to make room" for the fortress. The main Jewish synagogue in the city, the Choral Synagogue, was completed c. 1862.
World War I and interbellum
During World War I, the town was captured by the Imperial German Army under August von Mackensen on 25 August 1915, during the Great Retreat of 1915. Shortly after Brest fell into German hands, war poet August Stramm, who has been called "the first of the Expressionists" and one of "the most innovative poets of the First World War," was shot in the head during an attack on nearby Russian positions on 1 September 1915.
In March 1918, in the Brest Fortress on the western outskirts of Brest at the confluence of the Bug River and Mukhavets Rivers, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, ending the war between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers and transferring the city and its surrounding region to the sphere of influence of the German Empire. This treaty was subsequently annulled by the Paris Peace Conference treaties which ended the war and even more so by events and developments in Central and Eastern Europe. During 1918, the city became a part of the Podolia Governorate of the Ukrainian People's Republic as a result of negotiations and own treaty between delegation of the Ukrainian Central Rada and Central Powers.
Following the Polish–Soviet War Brest became part of the Second Polish Republic, with borders formally recognized by the Treaty of Riga of 1921. It was renamed Brześć nad Bugiem on 20 March 1923 (Brest on the Bug) in Poland, and named the capital of the Polesie Voivodeship in accordance with the pre-1795 tradition. In the twenty years of Poland's sovereignty, of the total of 36 brand new schools established in the city, there were ten public, and five private Jewish schools inaugurated, with Yiddish and Hebrew as the language of instruction. The first-ever Jewish school in Brześć history opened in 1920, almost immediately after Poland's return to independence. In 1936 Jews constituted 41.3% of the Brześć population or 21,518 citizens. Some 80.3% of private enterprises were run by Jews. The Polish Army troops of the 9th Military District along with its headquarters were stationed in Brześć Fortress.
The city had an overwhelmingly Jewish population in the Russian Partition: 30,000 out of 45,000 total population according to Russian 1897 census, which fell to 21,000 out of 50,000 according to the Polish census of 1931.<ref name=Browning>Christopher R. Browning, Nazi policy, Jewish workers, German killers', Google Print, p.124</ref>
World War II
During the German Invasion of Poland in 1939, the city was defended by a small garrison of four infantry battalions under General Konstanty Plisowski against General Heinz Guderian's XIX Panzer Corps. After four days of heavy fighting, the Polish forces withdrew southwards on 17 September. The Soviet invasion of Poland began on the same day. As a result, the Soviet Red Army entered the city at the end of September 1939 following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact's Secret Protocol, and a joint Nazi-Soviet military parade took place on 22 September 1939. While Belarusians consider it a reunification of the Belarusian nation under one constituency (the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic at that time), Poles consider it the date when the city was lost. During the Soviet control (1939–41), the Polish population was subject to arrests, executions and mass deportations to Siberia and the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. Many Poles were imprisoned in the local prison, and then moved to a prison Minsk. It is suspected that they were murdered by the Soviets in the Katyn massacre in 1940.
On 22 June 1941, Brest Fortress and the city were attacked by Nazi Germany on the first day of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. The fortress held out for six days. Nearly all its Soviet army defenders perished. The Germans placed Brest under the administration of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The remaining municipal Jewish population (about 20,000) was sequestered in the Brest ghetto established by the German authorities in December 1941 and later murdered in October 1942. Only seven Jews survived the Nazi executions.
The Germans also operated a Nazi prison, a forced labour "education" camp for men and women, a forced labour camp for Jews, the AGSSt 3 prisoner-of-war assembly center, the Dulag 314 transit POW camp for Italians, the Stalag 397 POW camp for Soviet POWs and a subcamp of the Stalag 360 POW camp in the city.
The Polish resistance movement, including the Polesie District of the Home Army, was active in the city.
The city was re-occupied by the Red Army on 28 July 1944, and eventually annexed from Poland the following year.
Post-war period
In 1945, the Związek Obrońców Wolności'' ("Freedom Defenders Association") Polish resistance organization was founded in the city, with its activities including secret Polish schooling, rescuing historical Polish monuments from devastation and organising aid for repressed people and those in a difficult material situation. The organization was crushed by the NKVD in 1948, and its members were deported to Gulag forced labour camps for 25 years.
In early 2019, a mass grave containing the remains of 1,214 people were found in the Brest Ghetto area during a construction project. Most are believed to have been Jews murdered by Nazis.
Geography
Brest lies astride the Mukhavets River, which is known to Bresters as "the river". The river flows west through the city, dividing it into north and south, and meets the Bug River in the Brest Fortress. The river flows slowly and gently. You can hop into a tire innertube and take a relaxing float down this river. Today the river looks quite broad in Brest. The terrain is fairly flat around Brest. The river has an extremely broad floodplain, that is about across. Brest was subject to flooding in the past. One of the worst floods in recorded history occurred in 1974.
Part of the floodplain was reclaimed with hydraulic mining. In the 1980s, big cutter-suction dredgers mined sand and clay from the riverbed to build up the banks.
In the 2000s, two new residential areas were developed in the southwest of Brest.
To the east of Brest, the Dnieper–Bug Canal was built in the mid-nineteenth century to join the river to Pina, a tributary of the Pripyat River which in turn drains into the Dnieper. Thus Brest has a shipping route all the way to the Black Sea. If not for a dam and neglected weirs west of Brest, north-western European shipping would be connected with the Black Sea also.
Climate
Brest has a humid continental climate but slightly leans towards oceanic due to the irregular winter temperatures that mostly hover around the freezing point. However, summers are warm and influenced by its inland position compared to areas nearer the Baltic Sea.
Points of interest
A majestic Soviet-era war memorial was constructed on the site of the 1941 battle to commemorate the known and unknown defenders of the Brest Fortress. This war memorial is the largest tourist attraction in the city. The Berestye Archeological Museum of the old city is located on the southern island of the Hero-Fortress. It has objects and huts dating from the 11th – 13th century that were unearthed during the 1970s.
The Museum of Rescued Art Treasures has a collection of paintings and icons. Brest City Park is over 100 years old and underwent renovations from 2004 to 2006 as part of a ceremony marking the park's centennial. In July 2009, the Millennium Monument of Brest was unveiled. Sovetskaya Street is a popular tourist destination in Brest; it was dramatically reconstructed in 2007–2009. Other important landmarks include the Brest Railway Museum.
Education
Brest is home to two Universities: A.S. Pushkin Brest State University and Brest State Technical University.
Transport
Being situated on the main railway line connecting Berlin and Moscow, and a transcontinental highway (the M1 highway is part of the European route E30 running from Cork to Omsk, where it links with Asian Highway 6 leading to Busan), Brest became a principal border crossing out of the Soviet Union in the postwar era. Today it links the European Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
The city of Brest is served by Brest-Tsentralny railway station. Because of the break-of-gauge at Brest, where the Russian broad gauge meets the European standard gauge, all passenger trains, coming from Poland, must have their bogies replaced here, to travel on across Belarus. The freight must be transloaded from cars of one gauge to cars of another. Some of the land in the Brest rail yards remains contaminated due to the transhipment of radioactive materials here since Soviet days. However, cleanup operations have been taking place.
The local airport, Brest Airport (code BQT), operates flights on a seasonal schedule to Kaliningrad in the Russian Federation and seasonal charter flights to Burgas and Antalya.
Sport
HC Meshkov Brest is the most successful team of the Belarusian Men's Handball Championship, as well as the (2018–19)
champions. Also, there is a Women's handball club in Brest – HC Victoria-Berestie.
HK Brest of the Belarusian Extraleague are the local pro hockey team.
The sports venues are located on the northern riverside on the hydraulic fill, consisting of an indoor track-and-field centre, the Brest Ice Rink, and Belarus' first outdoor baseball stadium. On the opposite riverside is a large rowing course opened in 2007, home of the National Center for Olympic Training in Rowing. It meets international requirements and can host international competitions. Moreover, it has accommodation and training facilities, favourable location, away from the border crossing along Warsaw Highway (the European route E30).
Media
There are some newspapers in Brest: Brestskaya Gazeta, Brestskiy Kurier, Vecherniy Brest.
International relations
Sister cities
Sister cities of Brest include:
Astrakhan, Russia
Dorogomilovo District (Moscow), Russia
Izhevsk, Russia
Kaliningrad, Russia
Kovrov, Russia
Malgobek, Russia
Nevsky District (Saint Petersburg), Russia
Nizhny Tagil, Russia
Novorossiysk, Russia
Oryol, Russia
Petrozavodsk, Russia
Ryazan, Russia
Tyumen, Russia
Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine
Lutsk, Ukraine
Odesa, Ukraine
Siedlce County, Poland
Terespol, Poland
Baienfurt, Germany
Baindt, Germany
Berg, Germany
Ravensburg, Germany
Weingarten, Germany
Baiyin, China
Xiaogan, China
Batumi, Georgia
Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan
Coevorden, Netherlands
Port-sur-Saône, France
Subotica, Serbia
Former twin towns:
Biała Podlaska, Poland
In March 2022, the Polish city of Biała Podlaska suspended its partnership with Brest as a reaction to the Belarusian involvement in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Other forms of cooperation
Brest maintains partnership with:
Ashdod, Israel
Botoșani, Romania
Brest, France
Ludza, Latvia
Maldon, England, United Kingdom
Pleven, Bulgaria
Honours
A minor planet, 3232 Brest, discovered by the Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Ivanovna Chernykh in 1974, is named after the city.
Notable people
Rabbi Yehoshua Leib Diskin, Rabbi of Brisk
Menachem Begin, late Prime Minister of Israel
Jarosław Dąbrowski, Polish revolutionary and general
David Dubinsky, head of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union
Andrej Dyńko (b. 1974), journalist and editor
Louis Gruenberg, composer
Nikolay Karpol, Russian women's volleyball coach
Jerzy Kolendo, Polish classical archaeologist and historian
Harry Kopp (1880–1943), American lawyer and politician
Pyotr Masherov, secretary of Belarusian committee of the Communist Party of Soviet Union
Yulia Nesterenko, Olympian women's 100 m champion
Dzmitryj Rubašeŭski (nom de guerre (“Hans”))(1992-2022), Belarusian volunteer killed in action defending Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion
Nathan Sharon (1925–2011), Israeli biochemist, expert on lectins
Hienadz Shutau (1975 – 2020), a protestor killed during the protests against the 2020 Belarusian presidential election
The Soloveitchik rabbinical family associated with the Brisk yeshivas, and descendant Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik
David B. Steinman, American structural engineer; the designer of the Mackinac Bridge called "Big Mac"
Aliaksandar Cvikievič (1888 – 1937), Belarusian politician, historian, jurist, philosopher and a victim of Stalin's purges
Ganna Walska, Polish opera singer
Liubov Charkashyna, Belarusian bronze medallist in the individual all-around rhythmic gymnastics competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics
Rabbi Aaron ben Meir of Brest, eighteenth-century rabbi
Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, haredi rabbi in Israel
Sara Szweber, Bundist
See also
Names of European cities in different languages: B
Notes
Explanatory notes
Citations
Further reading
Kristian Gantser [Christian Ganzer], Irina Yelenskaya, Yelena Pashkovich [et al.] (ed.): Brest. Leto 1941 g. Dokumenty, materiyaly, fotografii. Smolensk: Inbelkul’t, 2016.
External links
Brest Stories Guide – Audiotheatre on the history of anti-semitism and the Shoah in Brest from 1937 to 1944 by the independent Brest theatre "Krylja Cholopa" (English/Russian)
1019 establishments in Europe
Archaeological sites in Belarus
Belarus–Poland border crossings
Brest Litovsk Voivodeship
Brestsky Uyezd
Cities in Belarus
Holocaust locations in Belarus
Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust
Polesie Voivodeship
Populated places established in the 11th century
Populated places in Brest Region